NEW: The Kinship Care Practice Guide translates the strongest evidence into actionable recommendations. Find out more.
NEW: The Kinship Care Practice Guide translates the strongest evidence into actionable recommendations. Find out more.
This project or publication was produced before or during the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) and the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF).
This report presents findings from a realist-informed study on the Rights and Participation Service (RAPS), an in-house advocacy service within Birmingham Children’s Trust. This study aims to understand how advocacy services support care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making and develops an initial theory of how, why and under what circumstances RAPS facilitates participation, represents young people’s interests and contributes to positive outcomes. Resulting practice recommendations and a ‘good practice framework’ offer guidance around implementing advocacy services such that they are grounded in lived experience.
This study sought to explore the following research questions:
This study employed a qualitative approach, and collated available research evidence using the following activities:
The following key themes emerged from the interviews and focus groups:
These themes shaped the analysis and understanding of key components, mechanisms, and contextual factors influencing the advocacy service and its participatory approach.
The Initial Programme Theory (IPT) identified advocacy service components enabling participation in decision-making; the organisational culture, in-house resourcing model, information provision and relationships building. Key mechanisms theorised as critical for translating service activities into meaningful participation outcomes include:
Cultivating accountability via clear communication channels and responsiveness to feedback.
While the IPT provides an important starting point for understanding the RAPS advocacy service, further research is needed to refine and validate the theory. The complex service environment means the transferability of findings to other advocacy models should be approached cautiously. Ongoing multi-method research across different provisions would strengthen the evidence base to systematically identify what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Several priority areas for policy and practice recommendations emerge from this preliminary analysis of an in-house advocacy programme. These include
You can view the project linked to this publication here:
